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Thumbs down

I’m not a Netflix customer, but I’m sorry to see that it is switching its star rating system to a thumbs up/thumbs down arrangement.

I guess a further dumbing down of movie culture — or maybe more accurately, “culture” — doesn’t amount to much given the sad level that movie discourse has sunk to since Ebert and Siskel brought on the thumbs ratings on “At the Movies” beginning in the 1980s.

“Get ready to say goodbye to star ratings on Netflix: The company is getting ready to replace stars with Pandora-like thumbs ups and thumbs downs in the coming weeks.

“Previously-given star rating will still be used to personalize the profiles of Netflix users, but the stars are disappearing from the interface altogether.

“Netflix VP of Product Todd Yellin told journalists on Thursday during a press briefing at the company’s headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif., that the company had tested the new thumbs up and down ratings with hundred of thousands of members in 2016.

” ‘We are addicted to the methodology of A/B testing,’ Yellin said.

“The result was that thumbs got 200% more ratings than the traditional star-rating feature.

“Netflix is also introducing a new percent-match feature that shows how good of a match any given show or movie is for an individual subscriber. For example, a show that should close to perfectly fit a user’s taste may get a 98% match. Shows that have less than a 50% match won’t display a match-rating, however.

“Yellin said that the company completely relied on its users rating titles with stars when it began personalization some years ago. At one point, it had over 10 billion 5-star ratings, and more than 50% of all members had rated more than 50 titles.

“However, over time, Netflix realized that explicit star ratings were less relevant than other signals. Users would rate documentaries with 5 stars, and silly movies with just 3 stars, but still watch silly movies more often than those high-rated documentaries.

” ‘We made ratings less important because the implicit signal of your behavior is more important,’ Yellin said.”

“Implicit signal,” huh? The old A/B addiction, eh? Makes sense in a Big Brotherish sort of way, I suppose.

My own argument for movie rating would go in the other direction, though.

Why not? It takes a lot of effort to make a movie, so don’t viewers owe it to filmmakers to expend a little effort themselves to grade their films? I mean, really. How lazy can you get?

In fact, handing out stars even feels arbitrary, although allowing half-stars at least provides for something like a 0-to-100-by-tens scale: zero stars for a worthless picture; a half-star equating to a grade of 10; 1 star a 20; 1 1/2, 30; 2 a 40; 2 1/2, 50; 3 a 60; 3 1/2 a 70; 4 an 80; 4 1/2, a 90; and 5, 100. You start with that idea, change the stars to numbers and then just finesse it.

Moreover, who believes that people need to educate themselves less, not more? You don’t need Netflix’s algorithms to tell you what kind of movie you’ll like. It’s because people don’t read about movies that they rely on a robot to choose for them. We’re already living “1984” without that bad idea.

Even if you can’t find a single critic whose opinion you respect, you can learn a lot by reading why they think as they do. You learn nothing from a thumb. That’s why it was maddening to watch Ebert and Siskel, whose arguments, however cogent or informative or not, invariably were reduced to thumbing. My theory is that this moved American audiences away from the serious film discussions of previous decades and, in turn, inculcated the impression that movies were trivial. The result? More trivial movies.

Netflix’s selections already are limited, anyway. I’m told they’re at about 100,000, which, when you deduct all the TV shows, probably pares down to less than 50,000. That may sound substantial, but once you start really looking into the vast scope of movies, you’d be amazed at how many great titles it doesn’t carry.

I suppose it’s all a moot point, since the thumbs are on the way. So go ahead and let Netflix have your money if you like; just don’t let it take your brain.